Jofre Carnicer

University of Barcelona | UB · Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences.

Brief introduction: What are microclimates and why are they important? Microclimate science has developed into a global discipline. Microclimate science is increasingly used to understand and mitigate climate and biodiversity shifts. Here, we provide an overview of the current status of microclimate ecology and biogeography in terrestrial ecosystem...

The thermal balance of forests is the result of complex land–atmosphere interactions. Different climate regimes and plant functional types can have contrasting energy budgets, but little is known about the influence of forest structure and functional traits. Here, we combined spaceborne measurements of surface temperature from ECOSTRESS with ground...

Ecotones linking open and forested habitats contain multiple microhabitats with varying vegetal structures and microclimatic regimes. Ecotones host many insect species whose development is intimately linked to the microclimatic conditions where they grow (e.g., the leaves of their host plants and the surrounding air). Yet microclimatic heterogeneit...

Fire activity has significantly changed in Europe over the last decades (1980–2020s), with the emergence of summers attaining unprecedented fire prone weather conditions. Here we report a significant shift in the non-stationary relationship linking fire weather conditions and fire intensity measured in terms of CO2 emissions released during biomass...

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we...

Resilience of endangered rear edge populations of cold‐adapted forests in the Mediterranean basin is increasingly altered by extreme heatwave and drought pressures. It remains unknown, however, whether microclimatic variation in these isolated forests could ultimately result in large intra‐population variability in the demographic responses, allowi...

Research in environmental science relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature at around 2 meter above ground1-3. These climatic grids however fail to reflect conditions near and below the soil surface, where critical ecosystem functions such as soil carbon storage are controlled and most biodiversity resides4-8...

The European Union's Natura 2000 (N2000) is among the largest international networks of protected areas. One of its aims is to secure the status of a predetermined set of (targeted) bird and butterfly species. However, nontarget species may also benefit from N2000. We evaluated how the terrestrial component of this network affects the abundance of...

The drivers of global change, including increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, N and S deposition, and climate change, likely affect the nutritional status of forests. Here we show forest foliar concentrations of N, P, K, S and Mg decreased significantly in Europe by 5%, 11%, 8%, 6% and 7%, respectively during the last three decades. The decr...

Vegetation cover generates local microclimatic gradients in the understorey, being especially pronounced at narrow ecotones linking open and forested habitats (open-closed ecotones). They provide key habitats for multiple insect communities and may largely determine the exposure of herbivorous insects to the increasing impacts of climate change. We...

The mechanisms translating global circulation changes into rapid abrupt shifts in forest carbon capture in semi‐arid biomes remain poorly understood. Here we report unprecedented multidecadal shifts in forest carbon uptake in semi‐arid Mediterranean pine forests in Spain over 1950‐2012. The averaged carbon sink reduction varies between 31‐37%, and...

Widespread population declines have been reported for diverse Mediterranean butterflies over the last three decades, and have been significantly associated with increased global change impacts. The specific landscape and climatic drivers of these declines remain uncertain for most declining species. Here, we analyse whether plastic phenotypic trait...

Temporal variability in ecological processes has attracted the attention of many disciplines in ecology, which has resulted in the development of several quantitative indices. The coefficient of variation (CV = standard deviation × mean−1) is still one of the most commonly used indices to assess temporal variability, despite being known to present...

The increase in aridity, mainly by decreases in precipitation but also by higher temperatures, is likely the main threat to the diversity and survival of Mediterranean forests. Changes in land use, including the abandonment of extensive crop activities, mainly in mountains and remote areas, and the increases in human settlements and demand for more...

Carbon dioxide and nitrogen fertilization effects on ecosystem carbon sequestration may slow down in the future because of emerging nutrient constraints, climate change reducing the effect of fertilization, and expanding land use change and land management and disturbances. Further, record high temperatures and droughts are leading to negative impa...

Climate change is increasing temperatures globally and drought in many regions. If climate change continues at its current rate, the resilience of many ecosystems will likely be exceeded, altering their structure and function. A consistent understanding of the impacts, however, remains elusive due to the difficulty of obtaining data of field studie...

In this chapter, the authors explore whether life-history theory provides an integrative framework for the mechanisms mediating the responses of invertebrates to global warming. More specifically, they suggest that life-history trade-offs are key to the integration of the implied mechanisms because they will constrain the simultaneous optimisation...

Concentrations of nutrient elements in organisms and in the abiotic environment are key factors influencing ecosystem structure and function. We studied how concentrations and stoichiometries of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) in leaves of forest trees are related to phylogeny and to environmental factors (mean annual precipitation,...

The rapid expansion of systematic monitoring schemes necessitates robust methods to reliably assess species' status and trends. Insect monitoring poses a challenge where there are strong seasonal patterns, requiring repeated counts to reliably assess abundance. Butterfly monitoring schemes ( BMS s) operate in an increasing number of countries with...

This study investigated the factors underlying the variability of needle and soil elemental composition and stoichiometry and their relationships with growth in Pinus sylvestris forests throughout the species' distribution in Europe by analysing data from 2245 forest stands. Needle N concentrations and N:P ratios were positively correlated with tot...

AimPlant elemental composition and stoichiometry are crucial for plant structure and function. We studied to what extent elemental stoichiometry in plants might be strongly related to environmental drivers and competition from coexisting species.LocationEurope.Methods We analysed foliar N, P, K, Ca and Mg concentrations and their ratios among 50 sp...

Recent large-scale studies of tree growth in the Iberian Peninsula reported contrasting positive and negative effects of temperature in Mediterranean angiosperms and conifers. Here we review the different hypotheses that may explain these trends and propose that the observed contrasting responses of tree growth to temperature in this region could b...

ABSTRACT Aim: Large-scale patterns of limitations in tree recruitment remain poorly described in the Mediterranean Basin, and this information is required to assess the impacts of global warming on forests. Here we unveil the existence of opposite trends of recruitment limitation between the dominant genera Quercus and Pinus on a large scale and id...

Although species richness is classically believed to increase with area and habitat heterogeneity, unimodal patterns are commonly observed (1). A recently developed theoretical model combining the main elements of niche and island biogeography theories suggests that such unimodal patterns of species richness can result from area-heterogeneity trade...

A precise knowledge of forest demographic gradients in the Mediterranean area is essential to assess future impacts of climate change and extreme drought events. Here we studied the geographical patterns of forest demography variables (tree recruitment, growth and mortality) of the main species in Spain and assessed their multiple ecological driver...

We review the evidence of how organisms and populations are currently responding to climate change through phenotypic plasticity, genotypic evolution, changes in distribution and, in some cases, local extinction. Organisms alter their gene expression and metabolism to increase the concentrations of several antistress compounds and to change their p...

Plant-invasive success is one of the most important current global changes in the biosphere. To understand which factors explain such success, we compared the foliar traits of 41 native and 47 alien-invasive plant species in Oahu Island (Hawaii), a location with a highly endemic flora that has evolved in isolation and is currently vulnerable to inv...

Long-range, seasonal migration is a widespread phenomenon among insects, allowing them to track and exploit abundant but ephemeral resources over vast geographical areas. However, the basic patterns of how species shift across multiple locations and seasons are unknown in most cases, even though migrant species comprise an important component of th...

a b s t r a c t The global financial system is a major component of our global society. The available analyses of sustainability, however, have poorly assessed the role of the financial system in scenarios of future global change. Here we contrast current global flows in the financial system with the future economic costs of a worldwide transition...

Aim Adaptive trait continua are axes of covariation observed in multivariate trait data for a given taxonomic group. These continua quantify and summarize life‐history variation at the inter‐specific level in multi‐specific assemblages. Here we examine whether trait continua can provide a useful framework to link life‐history variation with demogra...

http://www.icp-forests.org/RepEx.htm

Here we review how adaptive traits contribute to the emergence and maintenance of species richness gradients through their influence on demographic and diversification processes. We start by reviewing how demographic dynamics change along species richness gradients. Empirical studies show that geographical clines in population parameters and measur...

Although it is well established that butterfly richness is affected by climate and human factors (e.g. habitat disturbance and degradation) at different spatial scales, the drivers behind these changes vary greatly according to the geographical region and the ecology of the species concerned. It is essential that this variation be understood if tre...

Climate change is progressively increasing severe drought events in the Northern Hemisphere, causing regional tree die-off events and contributing to the global reduction of the carbon sink efficiency of forests. There is a critical lack of integrated community-wide assessments of drought-induced responses in forests at the macroecological scale, i...

The strong environmental effects of greenhouse gas emissions derived from oil use and the negative socioeconomic consequences of future oil scarcity make it urgent that we shift to alternative affordable energy sources. Here we briefly overview the multiple economic, technological, and political pathways that should be implemented immediately to ac...

Plant-invasive success is one of the most important current global changes in the biosphere. To understand which factors explain such success, we compared the foliar traits of 41 native and 47 alien-invasive plant species in Oahu Island (Hawaii), a location with a highly endemic flora that has evolved in isolation and is currently vulnerable to inv...

Ecological network patterns are influenced by diverse processes that operate at different temporal rates. Here we analyzed whether the coupled effect of local abundance variation, seasonally phenotypic plastic responses, and species evolutionary adaptations might act in concert to shape network patterns. We studied the temporal variation in three i...

Theory shows that the presence of behavioural switching between alternative resources can contribute to coexistence when competitors differ in trophic-related traits. In addition, switching can generate disruptive selection on such traits in a low-diversity community, increasing the number of species. Both of these processes should produce communit...

Aim The paradigm that species’ patterns of distribution, abundance and coexistence are the result of adaptations of the species to their niches has recently been challenged by evidence that similar patterns may be generated by simple random processes. We argue here that a better understanding of macroecological patterns requires an integration of b...

Geographic divergences in patterns of species richness were studied for the terrestrial birds of North America using Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) census data subdivided for guild and migratory groups. Our aim was to study if species richness patterns for North American birds were best viewed as the convergent response of different groups to a common...

Aim To consider the role of local colonization and extinction rates in explaining the generation and maintenance of species richness gradients at the regional scale. Location A Mediterranean biome (oak forests, deciduous forests, shrublands, pinewoods, firwoods, alpine heathlands, crops) in Catalonia, Spain. Methods We analysed the relative importa...